6 Ways Publishing Blog Posts Can Improve Your SEO
Blogging has always been an essential aspect of digital marketing. It offers online businesses various benefits.
Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is one way a company stands to benefit from blogging. For starters, SEO refers to the process of increasing traffic to a website from search engines.
In other words, the goal of optimizing a website is to make it more visible to people using Google, Bing, and other search engines.
While seemingly every company has a blog nowadays, the question remains: how are they benefiting from it? Do their websites even rank organically on search engines?
Here are six crucial ways that publishing blog posts can help you improve SEO.
Generate Organic Traffic
Did you know that organic search results drive more web traffic than paid results by tenfold? A mind-blowing 70-80% of search engine users click organic results and ignore paid ads.
Think of search results as a grocery store where you have a mix of natural produce and canned products. Which one are you more likely to gravitate towards?
Organic search results generally mean results in their natural form. No paid ads, bidding or other strategies where you have to spend money to earn a top spot.
This is how it works:
- You publish more quality content
- Google starts discovering your content
- Google indexes your site
- Google’s algorithm checks your site frequently
- Your site starts ranking higher on search results.
In simpler terms, each time you write and post a fresh blog post, you typically create a new link for your website. Each URL link is another opportunity for your site to rank on search engines.
While achieving this can take quite some time, you can incorporate industry keywords and hot topics that will make you look like an expert in your target audience’s eyes. They’ll be searching more for your content, which now creates a ripple effect through search results.
Strategically Incorporate Keywords
Keywords are vital aspects of SEO. They will help you get your page, products, or services in front of your target audience’s eyes.
Simply put, SEO keywords are phrases that you incorporate in your blog posts to help your target audience find you through search results. Keywords are also topics or ideas that stipulate what your content is about.
Before you embark on writing a blog post for your site, it’s always important to carry out keyword research, which helps you know which keywords your target audience is searching for. You can then use these keywords strategically in your content to improve your SEO.
If you’re yet to become the biggest known brand in your industry, you’re better off using long-tail keywords. These are more specific keywords, which means that they have far less competition than one-word keywords.
For example, if you’re in the baking and pastry business, “custom-themed birthday cakes” may be more effective than “birthday cakes” in reaching out to a specific audience. Such a long-tail keyword will help you reach more qualified leads.
What are the differences between long-tail keywords and short-tail keywords?
| Long-Tail Keywords | Short-Tail Keywords | |
| Volume | Low | High |
| Competition | Low | High |
| Focus | High | Low |
| Cost | Low | High |
| Conversion Rate | High | Low |
Avoid keyword stuffing and aimlessly placing keywords in the content. Your keywords are supposed to flow naturally with the rest of the content. Only use them when and where relevant.
With a content agency like CopySmiths, you won’t have to worry about using the right keywords strategically in your content.
Create Unique and Fresh Content
Who else loves fresh and unique content other than the audience? Did someone at the back say Google? Yes, you’re right. Add other search engines to the equation and see how important fresh content is for your content marketing strategy.
Source: techsoup.org
Search engines primarily want to provide their users with relevant and timely content that provides value to them. Updating your pages regularly communicates to the algorithms that your site most likely provides up-to-date content.
The algorithms then index your site and are more likely to rank it highly in search results.
You’re rarely going to change the content on your homepage and landing pages. So, how do you keep posting fresh content on your site? By blogging.
In this sense, then we could say that blogging is by far the cheapest and easiest way to establish yourself as an authority in your industry.
Keep your target audience at the top of your mind. They’re more likely to stay on your site, searching for and consuming content that’s relevant to them. The time spent on your site is another essential ranking factor for search results.
Backlinking to Authority Sites
Backlinks are also referred to as inbound links, one-way links, or incoming links. Backlinking refers to adding links to other authority websites.
Backlinks signify to Google that your site offers valuable and informative content. You also get to build great relationships with other websites that will also link to your content. The more backlinks you get, the more your pages rank higher on search results.
Source: semupdates.com
You should be careful with backlinking and ensure you do it the right way. Placing links haphazardly could get you penalised.
How do you ensure you only use quality links? Here are a few characteristics of quality links that will help you stay away from low-quality ones:
- Link to authoritative and reputable sites
- Include target keywords in the anchor text
- The site you’re linking to offers related content to your page
- Link to a domain that hasn’t previously linked to your site
- Drives traffic to the linked site
When publishing your next blog post, have in mind that you could be missing out on organic traffic because your page lacks high-quality backlinks.
Potential to Go Viral
Posting regularly on relevant and hot topics could make your blog post go viral. You might just get the right stroke of luck and have your article shared and read over a thousand times.
However, don’t always aim for going viral. It could never happen in your entire lifetime. Publishing interesting and timely content doesn’t guarantee the number of readers your post will get.
“One of the biggest challenges for many content marketers is the need for a shift in mindset towards valuable content.”- Neil Patel.
Your main focus should be to always publish evergreen articles that will remain relevant for the longest time. How can you ensure your content is evergreen?
Publish articles that are timely but with a touch of current and future trends. Also, incorporate keywords that won’t become irrelevant any time soon. Establish what your target audience is looking for online and tailor your content around that.
Blogging Helps You Build Your Credibility
The more you speak on relevant topics in your industry, the more your target audience and search engine algorithms recognise you as an authentic and credible brand. Businesses that run and update blogs regularly are found more easily than those that don’t.
One way of building credibility is by inviting guest bloggers. Guest bloggers generally tend to be experts in their fields and have loyal fanbases. Your reputation increases by being associated with a certain expert.
For example, if you’re in the hospitality industry, you can invite a travel blogger to talk about their personal experience working with you. They can also share it on their social media pages to increase your exposure.
The result of building credibility and finding a voice is getting more organic traffic and repeat site visitors. Google boosts your authority level when it notices more people are interested in your content.
Blogging Significantly Boosts SEO
Blogging is certainly the right step towards achieving your SEO goals. Regularly publishing fresh and unique content helps Google notice your site. The algorithm in turn ranks your site high on search results.
Publishing on your blog also helps you build great relationships with other authority sites in your field by backlinking to their resources. You also build your credibility and get a chance to go viral.
CopySmiths
I'm Katrina McKinnon, founder of CopySmiths and Small Revolution. In my 20 years of experience, I have helped online businesses create high-performing content specifically on an eCommerce store's blog. Find me on LinkedIn and Twitter.
CopySmiths offers the best blog writing services for online stores.
If you'd like us to write blog articles for you, click here.
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